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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24225970">The First Hour</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/drunkencatman/pseuds/drunkencatman'>drunkencatman</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>tokedcatman's fallout 4 drabbles: sole survivor adeline davies [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fallout 4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Deathclaws, Not Beta Read, Other, fallout typical violence, sole doesn't know what she's doing, vault dwellers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 18:10:39</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,165</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24225970</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/drunkencatman/pseuds/drunkencatman</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>What Vault 111's sole survivor Adeline Davies' first hour outside of the vault entails.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>tokedcatman's fallout 4 drabbles: sole survivor adeline davies [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1748611</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The First Hour</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>
  <span class="u">
    <b>October 23rd, 2287</b>
  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Five minutes was all she stood at Nate’s place of death. Five minutes was how long she thought it took to sink in that he was really, truly dead. Body colder than the atmosphere, shaky hands unmoving, normally warm eyes decrepit of any light.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Adeline reached up with a feather-light touch, stroking his cheek. This man didn’t look or feel like her husband. He was a husk of what was, what used to be. Her bottom lip quivered and her chest burned but no tears fell.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Goodbye, Nate…” she whispered, “I— I’ll find the bastard who did this and I’ll get Shaun back.” Her eyes darted to his wedding band. It was bone-chilling when she pinched it with two fingers and pulled it off of his finger. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The cool metal rested in the palm of her hand, as she closed it into her fist. Her eyes darted around. Lifeless corpses, more husks lined the walls in their respective… </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Decompression chambers?</span>
  </em>
  <span> She thought, </span>
  <em>
    <span>No. That couldn’t be right… Decontamination chambers… Decontamination chambers wouldn’t freeze you solid.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Cryogenics; liquid nitrogen vapour normally used for therapy purposes, was the only thing she could think of. “Why would Vault-Tec do this?” She asked as if someone would answer back. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>After stomping down the oversized cockroaches, and jumping at the skeletons in the vault, Adeline strapped the Pip-Boy to her wrist and got the hell out of there. She was gasping for fresh air as the gear-shaped elevator lifted her to the surface. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The sun was bright, brighter than she’s ever thought it was before. The heat almost felt sweltering, in comparison to the sub-zero temperatures her body had become accustomed to. It felt like it had been a hundred years since she'd felt the sunlight… she stood there for a few passing moments, staring over the horizon at the destruction.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Adeline went down the hill, she was reunited with Codsworth. Still operational, although his voice transmitter was the slightest bit staticky and his metal housing was covered in dings, scuffs and rust. Nothing she couldn’t fix, after all, but it wasn’t exactly her first concern.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>What quickly became her first concern was how the Mr. Handy in front of her was laughing about how two-hundred and ten years had passed. She wasn’t laughing with him, for once.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Adeline didn’t say much to him. Her silence followed the moment Codsworth handed her an orange holotape, Nate’s neat printing which had </span>
  <em>
    <span>Hi, honey! </span>
  </em>
  <span>scrawled upon it, to the moment where he tearfully asked if Nate and Shaun were really gone.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nate is dead,” Adeline said, deadpanned. She looked down to her ring finger where she’d slipped Nate’s wedding band onto, “He’s not with us, but… but Shaun is. Somewhere.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Codsworth suggested Concord shortly after that. They traipsed down the cracked road together, all the way to one end of the bridge, where the Red Rocket Truck Stop resided on the other side. Codsworth wished her well, still sounding choked up as a human would… huh. Now wasn’t the time to ponder the sentience of her butler robot, however, as she had Concord to travel to.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Twenty minutes had passed since she stepped out of the vault.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Adeline met a nice enough dog at the truck stop. He was a German Shepherd, and he had a stars and stripes bandana tied around his throat. After rummaging around in the stop for a few minutes, she came to notice that the dog was plastered to her side. His wet nose would nuzzle its way to the palm of her hand, giving it a few licks before she would retract her hand. As they padded to Concord together, she felt… comforted by the repeated action. Weird, because she was more of a cat person before the vault.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Gunshots erupted from around the corner she turned. Men and women dressed in tattered clothes and pipes for armour shot up at a man on a balcony. Molotov cocktails were unleashed, although their throws weren’t quite accurate, or efficient enough to reach him. The dog beside her barked, and a few of the people looked back at her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The dog lunged at a man wielding a pipe-built pistol, knocking him flat on his back. Adeline was appalled as she watched the dog tear into the man’s jugular, rendering him dead in moments. Her brain didn’t quite catch up to her body until she saw a woman running at her, a tire iron in one hand and a switchblade in the other.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Adeline stopped the tire iron with her forearm, but the knife was definitely a hazard. Thoughts ran through her brain on overdrive, </span>
  <em>
    <span>kill or be killed, kill or be killed, kill or be killed</span>
  </em>
  <span>, that one coming from how Codsworth described the world now. Heart hammering against her ribcage, she lifted her pistol up with one hand and squeezed the trigger. Eyes shut, she felt the weight of the woman fall back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The pistol nearly flew from her hand due to the kick, but Adeline managed to shoot the woman in the jaw. The bullet flew out of the back of her head and she fell back, dead. Adeline could feel the warm blood on her face and she touched two fingers to a spatter, jaw hung open in horror.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This woman, ignoring the fact she was trying to skull Adeline with a tire iron, was dead. By Adeline’s hand. She felt frozen again, more frozen than that fridge she’d been boxed in. Her hands were trembling, grip tightening on her pistol.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey! Here, up on the balcony!” A voice called. She looked up to witness one of the assailants being pulverized by a laser weapon. Her eyes dragged up to the balcony, where he continued to speak. He had a distinct hat, long brimmed but one side was pinned up. “I got a group of settlers inside, the— the raiders are almost through the door! Grab that laser musket and help us. Please!” He pleaded, before turning tail and disappearing into the building.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It took Adeline a moment to catch up, still staring at the woman’s— the </span>
  <em>
    <span>raider’s </span>
  </em>
  <span>body. She willed the shock to let up as she bounded up to the laser musket, gripping it. She took one long look at her Pip-Boy, taking a few deep breaths before she entered the building.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Museum of Freedom, she remembered. Nate insisted on taking Shaun here one day, but she didn’t think a museum was a place for a baby. Regardless, they agreed to go one weekend when Adeline was off work. That date at the museum never happened, because of the bombs dropped upon Boston. And New York… and Pennsylvania.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Adeline and her new dog companion managed to get through the building without too much trouble. She let the dog grapple the raiders, and she’d shoot them down. Nausea kept getting worse and worse the more people she shot down, the more pools of blood she stepped in, and in general the longer she spent in this building. The dog was quick to stand close to her side as she walked into the room with the settlers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Adeline was acquainted with Preston Garvey, Sturges, Mama Murphy, and the Longs: Marcy and Jun. She reluctantly agreed to Sturges’ plan, not because she didn’t want to help, but because she was nowhere near used to the idea of having to kill.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Raiders were bad people, but with her baby-faced view, she still saw them as people.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Now look who Dogmeat brought to us,” Mama Murphy said, a great big grin on her face. She’d gripped Adeline by the free wrist, “You are not the type of person I’d think Dogmeat would have stuck to, but my, am I glad he chose you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Adeline scratched the back of her neck, “Dogmeat?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s right, Dogmeat.” Mama Murphy said dreamily as if she were in a daze. She reached over to scritch Dogmeat behind the ears, “He’s his own man, you know. No owner, but good luck trying to shake him off because he’s chosen you. I saw it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What? You… saw it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s the chems, kid. Oh, I see that look on your face. I’m the craziest ol’ lady you’ve ever met. The chems— they give me something called ‘The Sight’. I can look at what was, what is, and what will be… I saw you. I saw you would help us out of this mess will all’a the raiders,” When Adeline didn’t respond, she continued, “There’s something coming… in the darkness and it… it is angry…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Adeline immediately spoke up, then, “Mama Murphy. What is it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mama Murphy let out a raspy chuckle, “I’m sorry, kid. Sometimes I don’t even know. The Sight can be foggy, and unclear, but let me tell you,” she leaned in, “It ain’t a raider.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>With a fusion core she’d found at Sanctuary, she headed up to the roof where Sturges said a suit of T-45 power armour resided. She stared up at the suit apprehensively, nervously twisting around the rings on her finger. Dogmeat had travelled down the building again and went out the front door, assumedly to scan the area for more raiders. She let out a sigh, before shoving the fusion core into its holder.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Adeline situated herself in the power armour frame and cringed when it enclosed around her. Being an engineer who’s worked on a few suits pre-war, she felt she should be used to this feeling but yet, it was something she never came to like. These suits were only used for war and the war was what got her into this mess in the first place. Plus, claustrophobia didn’t get her very far with things like this.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Biting the bullet, Adeline ripped the minigun from the vertibird and decimated a raider atop a roof on the building adjacent to her. She had to admit, swinging around the minigun like it was a paperweight was empowering. She looked down to the ground, feet over the edge. The building was about four stories high, a jump that would most definitely paralyze someone from the neck down. The power she felt quickly dissipated as she stared down, a shiver riding up her spine.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A raider spotted her, pipe pistol pointed. The thing looked so misshapen that it looked like it would blow up and burn the raider’s face off. “Why don’t you come down here?! Show that fancy power armour up close, huh?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Adeline squinted through the plexiglass of the helmet, before letting the bullets rain on that raider. Seeing he had fallen, Adeline took a leap of faith and jumped off of the building, eyes closed until she hit the ground. The sudden ceasing of velocity caused the whole suit to shake, but when she opened her eyes she wasn’t a pile of mush and gore on the floor.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Raiders shot at her armour and she could easily take them all down, bullets firing at the speed of light. They all fell one by one as she walked along the road, eliminating the threats attempting to make their way towards the museum. She felt the ground shaking under her and she assumed that it was the heavy footfalls of the power armour, until she saw a large arm stick its way out of the ground.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Large was the biggest understatement in the world. Adeline felt high and mighty when she was plowing through the onslaught of raiders, but now she felt as small as she had been, before. What seemed to be a fifteen feet oversized lizard rose above her, letting out a roar that made her eardrums ring.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Deathclaw! Watch out!” Exclaimed one of the remaining raiders, who diverted their attention from the wreckage-causing power-armour-wearing endower of death to the true endower of death. The raider was taken in one, large meaty hand and ripped apart. Intestines and innards dripped to the ground and if that didn’t make her sick, she didn’t know what would.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The deathclaw roared again, eyes darting and then feasting its eyes upon Adeline. Adeline’s eyes widened in shock as she backed up, pointing the minigun and firing. Powerful charged lasers flew past her, striking the deathclaw square in the head, although it didn’t seem to do much to stop the creature from haphazardly charging at her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Still shooting, Adeline backed up slowly. She could see every single individual bullet wound in between the deathclaw’s scales, but that didn’t slow it down at all. It grabbed her by the front of the suit, smashing her down into the concrete. Her head smashed against the back of her helmet and a wave of pain followed, but if she knew she weren’t wearing it her brains would be in a puddle on the floor. She gasped, as the deathclaw leaned in towards her face, jaw agape.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Adeline’s heart rate rose faster and faster, with the deathclaw’s claws slashing away at her armour. Musket fire still continued, the deathclaw flinching at each hit. She tried to get up and she was careered downwards again, the impact causing one of the sensors to go haywire.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Shit,” Adeline hissed, trying once more to escape the deathclaw’s wrath. It yowled into the air, before plunging downwards and chomping down upon the front of Adeline’s helmet. The metal began to buckle under the raw strength of its jaw, and Adeline cursed louder. “Fuck!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The front of the helmet snapped, and the airtight lock broke as the deathclaw sent the helmet scraping down the pavement. Adeline was staring straight into the eyes of hell now, the animal’s bloodlust apparent as it swung once. She vehemently dodged it as one last shot fired, hitting the deathclaw’s large hand. The hand faded away into ash before she could even get a good look at it. Adrenaline pumping, she scrambled to get up and launched herself towards the minigun.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Turning around, Adeline screamed back at the creature as she aimed high with the minigun, letting the bullets rip upon its head and face. It tried to bound up to her again, but it was obvious it was struggling to stay right up. Blood trickled and spurted down the oversized reptilian as it croaked, and fell onto its side, lifeless. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was dead. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Adeline sighed a sigh of relief, standing in front of the corpse. She thought the roaches had substantial mutations before she saw this wasteland horror… she felt her own blood dripping down her face, but she tried to ignore it the best she could as she slowly pivoted, tiredly walking back into the Museum of Freedom. A few feet away from the door, she planted her hands onto her knees and doubled over, the nausea finally taking her over as she hurled. She emptied the two-hundred years old contents of her stomach onto the asphalt, her eyes watering as her throat burned. She took a few minutes to stand there and to will her stomach to settle, Dogmeat yipping and whining beside her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Adeline exited the power armour as soon as she entered the building, breaths struggling out of her lungs. After much praise from Preston and Sturges, Mama Murphy interrupted them to speak.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re a woman out of time… out of hope. But your son— your son’s out there, kid.” Mama Murphy said, tone more dazed than before, “I can feel his energy…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Adeline felt her heart speed up and stop all at the same time. Her head whipped around so fast that she almost gave herself whiplash, gaze not breaking from Mama Murphy’s. She hadn’t mentioned Shaun. Maybe she wasn’t just a crazy junkie, after all. “My son? Mama Murphy, where—“ her voice cracked and she tried to keep it steady, “Where is my son— where is Shaun?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t know where he is… I… I just know he’s out there.” Mama Murphy said, “His life force is strong, sweetheart… I don’t even need the Sight to tell you where life will take you now. The great green jewel of the Commonwealth… Diamond City. The biggest settlement still standin’.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Adeline thanked Mama Murphy and stepped back outside. For the first time, she felt the tears welling at her eyes and threatening to break past her waterline. Her lip was quivering and her hands were shaking, shaking harder than they did down in the vault.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Adeline walked with the remaining settlers to Sanctuary, oddly grim and silent as Dogmeat padded beside her. She was trying her hardest not to have a breakdown in front of these (mostly) kind strangers, knowing they were just as down on her luck as she was. They probably wouldn’t appreciate the weeping right now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Adeline lagged behind as the settlers entered Sanctuary Hills. She was trying to envision how her neighbourhood once looked, just like how she could recall that this was— used to be the neighbourhood straight out of a picture book. It was something she’d always wanted to live in as a little girl, but she could only look at the house she used to live in as yet another husk. Something so valuable— an absolute dream come true ripped from her grasp as soon as she achieved it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In her own little world, Adeline padded into her house. She went down the corridor and felt her throat ache as she stood in front of Shaun’s room. Sighing, she opened the door and forced herself to step in. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Adeline wasn’t much of a woodworker, but she had assisted Nate in building and painting his crib. The mobile Nate had dropped and the one she fixed hung above his crib, silent, unmoving, unnatural. She tried to remember the feeling she felt seeing her one-month-old infant laying there, but she couldn’t. She just </span>
  <em>
    <span>couldn’t </span>
  </em>
  <span>and that killed her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Adeline pulled the red armchair in the room up to the crib, sitting in it. Stiff as ever, but she remembered that Nate loved to sit in this chair, holding Shaun close to his chest as they both dozed off together. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Her two boys, </span>
  </em>
  <span>she called them. She would lean against the doorway and watch them for a few minutes, humoured by her husband… late-husband snoring.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Adeline felt her body failing her and her eyelids drooping. This day had gone on much too longer than she needed it. The wristwatch she normally wore— or did normally wear before it was blown to smithereens, was not upon her wrist so she checked her Pip-Boy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>An hour had passed since she stepped out of the vault.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Adeline paused, eyes not able to be torn away from the time. The minute changed and she just stared, mouth working itself as a fish in water. She didn’t know why but she was finally crying, and she was finally feeling anguish that she hasn’t felt in so, so, so long.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This was her life, now. Trapped in the remnants of Boston, two-hundred years after the fact, she was stuck in a time that shouldn’t have ever been hers.</span>
</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>i've started a new fallout 4 playthrough and i've been writing for my new sole survivor... decided to not let my drafts decay in my google docs, so i'll post them here in a series... most of these will just be one parters but if i do post something with more than one part it'll be a standalone<br/>feedback from anyone who reads would be appreciated !</p></blockquote></div></div>
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